This is a disturbing analogy. A true beehive is biologically sustainable because, while the workers all feed or protect the queen, she reproduces the workers' genes. In our society we all feed the "queens" (the 1%), either as workers or as consumers or both, but we are left to reproduce and feed our children with what scraps the 1% leave us. They have taken over our democracy and turned it into a plutocracy, and bedazzled our minds with religion and Fakes News (excuse me--Fox News) so that we do not recognize that they control us.

Yes you are correct, the bee hive is sustainable whereas modern human civilisation is not. That is why though the hive describes aspects of our social structure (probably because we've been studying bees for so many millenia and have tended to create a culture which emulates them, whereas it's much much harder to understand ape society... because we can not observe/dominate/control them so easily. It's the foundational bias of science, and science's biggest challenge, we know best what is easiest to know, but have little knowledge of things harder to know. Bees I know from our backyards, apes I must travel to the deep jungle forests to watch.

It's why I much prefer the cancer analogy. Our civilsation has been based on growth for 3-4 millenia, and this growth was driven by religious/patriarchal musings on 'what wonderfully full of potential creatures we are'. We may be wonderful, but we certainly are deadly. It would be nice if a future secular society could take this into account and not place so much power in "what can I achieve" but more "how can I live fully". Sitting as I am now, at a desk, in front of a computer screen, is not living fully, but it's the one of the only options we have as atheists. We shelter ourselves within the skirts of technology to distance ourselves from the hordes of religious crazy people out there!!! LoL

I don't want to make you envious, but I am sitting with my laptop computer, accessing the internet through a wireless modem, on the deck of my house in the rainforest of the Smokey Mountains in North Carolina. I am a hermit like you, though my neighbors are all Christians. I guess I am a closet atheist.

@Homer... I don't envy you, I myself have enjoyed my laptop wirelessly in Caribbean and African sea ports, atop mountains, and in my tub with a view. My brain has hermit qualities, but not my body, and though almost all my neighbours consider themselves "non-religious", they're all faithers. It is the biggest challenge facing atheist politics. Churches and gods and almost passé, it's this idea of "faith" and "goodness" that we need to fight, because they are enshrined in our ludicrous moral codes. "Goodness" is such a subjective meta-consciousness useless term, we'd do much better to make our social policies and laws based on results, not subjective ideas of goodness.

Badly? meh. If we were treating each other badly, the population would be dropping instead of increasing. Homo sapiens moral code was designed by the powerful to dominate the masses, and it has been extremely effective at this, to the point were notwithstanding our position at the top of the food chain, we are the most numerous mammal species on Earth. We are obsessed with these ideas of "good" and "evil", that is religious thought, there is no such thing as right and wrong, all is relative, what is pain for one is joy for another and vice versa. Happiness and pain are no less relative concepts. It all depends on what our life experience is.

The root of all evil. The love of money and the lies that people will tell and do in order to get that money! Yes, this also translates into power. The wealthy have power and they are not poor. This power is "power-over" as others are saying here.

I'd rather say "greed", money and the love of it can be a good thing, if viewed as a physical manifestation of effort or work; i.e. a token representing what one has produced or contributed. As such money is a reward (motivator) for producing wealth or value.

If wealth is viewed as something which can't be produced and must be taken (or lied for) greed can lead to people doing bad things to take what they want or need.

First, I don't frame questions of morality with religious terms such as "evil". Second, I don't simplify my moral universe by imagining there is a "root cause" for human beings treating one another badly. I think the universe is far more nuanced and complex. More like this

Yes, Luara, evil does exist. The murderous psychopath is an extreme example of this evil. Saying that such people and things are not evil shows that you have no understanding of the subject of evil. Certainly this kind of "evil" is not a religious subject.